


Surrounded, Surrounded

by ryry_peaches



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angry Kissing, Angst, Bearded Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes is a God Damn Tragedy, Bucky Barnes-centric, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Goats, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Internal Conflict, M/M, mentions of HYDRA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 05:39:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15700923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryry_peaches/pseuds/ryry_peaches
Summary: Before the battle in Wakanda, Steve and Bucky take a little time to catch up, resolve some things and remind one another what they're fighting for.





	Surrounded, Surrounded

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after listening to _You Found Me_ by The Fray. The internal struggle it describes of hopelessness vs that last shred of faith you hold onto when there's nothing else just _begged_ for an AIW fic. This fic possessed me, it took as much focus as I could give it.

_I’ve been calling_

_For years and years and years and years_

_And you never left me no messages_

_Never sent me no letters_

_You got some kinda nerve taking all I want_

— The Fray, _You Found Me_

  


“Ya look good, Steve,” Bucky says quietly, his voice rough. He’s managed to squirrel away a bit of time with Steve, simply told Shuri with a stern look and they had personal matters to discuss. _Seein’ as it’s the end of the world and all._ She acquiesced with a glint in her eye that told him she didn’t want to, said that she could probably keep Okoye off their backs for an hour or so.

An hour is more than generous.

They’re sitting in a windowless conference room in a building not far from the palace; there’s dust on the table, no pot in the coffeemaker on the counter that runs down the side of the room. Steve’s perched backwards in a swivel chair, arms folded across the top, eyes careful and intent on Bucky’s face. Bucky leans backwards against the table, half-sitting on it. He’s close enough to reach out and ruffle Steve’s hair, if he chooses.

“Thanks, pal,” Steve says evenly. He cocks his head. “You’ve kept your long hair.”

“No reason not to.” Bucky shrugs. “Feels good.” He doesn’t want to say how much of this life feels good, and how precarious it all feels. Even before T’Challa came to him personally — only hours ago — with news of impending battle. He’s felt off-kilter since they woke him up, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, sure that this idyllic life with the farm and the goats and the silk shawls wouldn’t last.

It’s oddly comforting to have been right. At least his paranoia hasn’t been wasted.

But he doesn’t want to tell Steve any of that. Doesn’t want to make his eyes soften with sympathy, his brow wrinkle up in that way that proves he’s older than he looks.

“Looks good,” Steve says, eyes wide and earnest. Bucky drinks him in; everything about Steve is soft and pastel: peachy skin, rose-petal lips, hair like a field of wheat at sunset. Steve looks farm-grown, even in that stupid suit that Stark probably made and the US government probably subsidized. Steve’s shape has changed like crazy over the past eighty-odd years, but his colors are the same in Wakanda in 2018 as they were in Brooklyn in 1940. 

“Thanks, pal.” Bucky wonders if Steve can tell how stilted and awkward he feels. Because everything about this conversation is _wrong wrong wrong._ They should have weeks to catch up. Time to tour the city and sample every vendor’s wares. Bucky should have a chance to take Steve to the farm, introduce him to every goat by name. They should get to spend the night there, in Bucky’s cozy little home; his nearest neighbor is maybe a quarter-mile out, and it would be so nice for a change to be Steve and Bucky together, no weight of expectation, no Captain America and his constant responsibility. Just two old men from Brooklyn.

They shouldn’t have a stolen hour in a cramped room with freaking white boards glaring at them from the walls.

They should be holding each other, at least by the hand. This carefully carved distance between them, the forced politeness and small talk — it’s driving Bucky up the wall. Steve _must_ feel it.

“I hear you’ve been — doing a lot of good around here,” Steve offers. “Makin’ progress. The princess says your recovery rate is off the charts.”

The fucking beard catches Bucky’s eye when Steve talks. Short and evenly sheared and probably rough to the touch, too dark for Steve’s peach-blossom complexion, but undeniably handsome. Frames those rosebud lips nicely.

“Buck?” Steve prompts, all polite and vacant.

“Right, yeah.” He mentally shakes himself. _Get it together, Barnes._ “I tend to the goats. Got my own little space a bit away from the city. S’nice. Quiet,” he says. Steve nods, rubbing at his stupid beard like he understands, like Steve middle-name-trouble Rogers has ever in his life valued a peaceful life.

There’s a moment of quiet then, while they make darting, awkward eye contact. Bucky runs the toe of his boot in an abstract pattern across the conspicuously clean floor, flexes his left arm like he’s trying to get out a cramp. As if it _could_ cramp. It’s heavy; he’s hardly worn it the past couple years, and he forgot how heavy and flipping uncomfortable it is.

“Okay, can I just ask you something,” Steve says, blessedly breaking the silence, and it’s not even a question because he says it so flatly. His brow is straight and stern, his chin probably all squared out under his beard.

The sudden change in demeanor jars Bucky a bit, but whatever is getting Steve, he’s clearly already made up his mind to ask about it anyway, so Bucky just shrugs.

“Have they…not given you a phone here? Access to internet? To a _mailbox?_ Because Shuri seems to be of a mind that you’ve been out of the ice for two years.” He says the latter two words slowly, rolling them along his tongue and flinging them in Bucky’s direction.

Bucky is clearly being accused of something, but he’s got no clue what it is. “I have been,” he says blankly. There’s a fire building suddenly behind Steve’s eyes, and that’s not new, not unfamiliar, but it’s been so long and Bucky isn’t quite sure why Steve is choosing now to stoke it.

“Two years,” Steve repeats, spitting the words again like acid. “You couldn’t have sent me a letter, a text, a carrier pigeon? _Two years_ you let me believe you were still under?”

 _Oh._ Bucky stands up straight, needs his feet solid beneath him if he’s gonna deal with this. “I don’t —” His brain is suddenly jumbled, which happens sometimes, when the things going on move faster than his thoughts. “Do you think we don’t get international news here? You’ve been on the run.”

 _“Incognito,”_ Steve the super-pedant says, “and hardly, at that. I haven’t been hard to find.”

Bucky shakes his head, trying to stop it spinning around this sudden shift in Steve, who’s straightened up as well and is looking at Bucky like he’s an opponent. “You really want to do this right here. Right _now?”_

Steve shakes his head too, holds his arms up like he’s angry. Angry at Bucky. A complete one-eighty from his calm coolness just moments ago. “We could all die tonight for all we know. Might as well lay it all out. Clear the air.”

“Lay it out?” Bucky echoes. It’s like there’s not enough oxygen getting to his brain; his thoughts are all echoing. His chest might be heaving. His ears feel plugged, like on a plane. “Okay. You were on the run _because of me,_ and I didn’t want to make shit worse than I already have. You caused an international incident. To _protect me._ Not a small mistake. And don’t think I’m not grateful, but God damn it, Steve.” He sucks in a breath, feeling just completely separate from this little speech, this argument, this room. Like he’s floating, like he’s drugged out. Just a bit. “Maybe Captain America didn’t need the damn Winter Soldier calling him up like an ex.”

“Maybe Steve Rogers needed Bucky Barnes calling him up,” Steve counters. His teeth click.

“Get your head outta the clouds, Steve!” _If_ that _doesn’t take ya back eighty years,_ he thinks to himself. “There’s no fucking difference — we don’t get to choose who we are. I thought I damn well proved _that_ two years ago!” He watches himself kick the edge of Steve’s chair lightly like someone else is doing it.

“We aren’t the stories they tell about us,” Steve says in his Captain voice, and Bucky floats back into himself enough to be pissed that Steve is still sitting, back ramrod straight, still speaking at a reasonable volume. _Indoor voice,_ he’s heard more than one parent tell their children. Bucky is most decidedly using his outdoor voice; if there were anyone else on this floor he’d be making a scene for sure, and he wants Steve to be part of it. _If you’re angry, act like it, damn it!_

“Of course we are! I can’t not be the Soldier, can’t not have his memories, his history. And you can’t not be Captain America. Not that you would want that, anyway.” Bitter, yeah, and almost snapped back into his own body. Good for the good ol’ American Hero, Captain Rogers, paradigm of goodness that he is, to not be the guy in the stories. Fucking bully for him. Bucky is too aware of the innocent blood on his mismatched hands. Shuri and her vibranium miracle meds can wipe out the HYDRA brainwashing, scrub the compliance from the corners of his psyche, erase the Soldier at the DNA level, but there’s nothing for the memories; they don’t budge. Neither do the headlines.

“Buck —”

“Damn it Steve, you don’t think I _wanted to?”_ His eyes are wet, which pisses him off even more. He’s not a crier, not at all, but this day, this discussion, this whole damnable situation — if there ever were an opportune time to take it up, this is it, so he lets twin tears fall down his cheeks, thanks God that no more follow.

Before he can wipe his face, sniffle, yell some more, take a breath, Steve is on his feet, pressing his mouth to Bucky’s firmly and not giving an inch. It’s like being kissed by a damn department store mannequin, that’s how stiff the punk is, and his legs are still all spread, still straddling that stupid chair, he’s just standing over it now, leaning forward and pressing his face into Bucky’s like an idiot, like it changes anything.

Bucky puts his hands on Steve’s waist, primarily so they don’t just dangle uselessly at his sides, and gently returns the kiss, the anger rushing out of him like the breath out of a balloon. _Woosh._

Steve doesn’t yield, doesn’t soften, just keeps pushing into Bucky like he wants to push right through him, and it makes no sense but it feels good — this is how he remembers kissing Steve, all push and anger, back when he was ninety-eight pounds of _fight_ with something to prove. He pulls back, doesn’t let Steve follow with his stupid magic bruising lips, doesn’t let the ridiculous beard keep scraping his chin.

“I don’t know what I think,” Steve says finally, desperately. His damn hard front is finally starting to break, and Bucky wants to press through his cracks and shatter him. “I know I want you for more than a couple hours. Am I allowed to be mad that I lost two years?” Steve would never even consider asking a non-Bucky person what he’s allowed to do and think and feel. And he’ll never actually mind what Bucky says.

“Maybe you don’t get to be mad _at me,”_ Bucky says. “You must really think I’m stupid.” He says it dully, inflection-less; he doesn’t expect reassurance. Doesn’t need it; he knows he’s smart. Smart enough to know who he is, to the world, to Steve. “Like I just didn’t want you. Like it was as easy as just calling you up. Like anything is ever as easy as what I do or do not want.”

“Buck —”

“I lost two years too, Steve.” He looks him straight in the eyes, all blue and round and sad and angry. “I lost a helluva lot more, in fact. And now we’re gonna go fight and probably die in another impossible war, and I think you don’t know if you don’t want it. You only ever care enough when the stakes are too high, when the decisions are made for you.” He’s still holding Steve like a dancing partner; Steve’s got him by the arms, leaned up into him, big and mad and solid.

“That’s not true.” His lips pull back; his teeth are slick.

“Maybe that’s just how it feels.” Bucky is so tired; he doesn’t even want to say any of this. “I don’t wanna fight you, Stevie. We both fight too much.”

Steve drops back into his chair, breaking Bucky’s hold on him. He runs his hands down Bucky’s arms until he’s got him by the wrists. “I don’t wanna fight,” he echoes. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“You never have, not in your whole damn life.” Bucky smiles at him, huffs a breath out, something akin to a laugh, or a sigh. Steve holds him fast; he doesn’t even bother trying to step back. _It’s fine fine fine._ Breathes heavy, blowing his hot stale breath back into Steve’s face. _Good._

“I don’t —” Steve’s holding his gaze as solidly as his arms. Those fucking eyes like a car wreck, all bright and flaming. Steve may have tired of fighting, but he’ll die before he stops, and even then Bucky thinks he’ll pick fights with the other angels, or whatever people like Steve become when they die. Steve’ll probably try to fight God himself. “When they pulled me out, they told me we won the war. No one said that the wars kept stacking up.”

“That’s nothing new.” Bucky can’t remember a time when he thought the world had run out of wars, that there might finally be no more battles for him to rage into, guns blazing. These past two years in Wakanda, surrounded by peaceful, good people, not having a damn weapon permanently attached to his body — he always knew it was only a personal reprieve. The world continued to destroy itself. He raised goats. He turned off the radio and pretended. But he never forgot. “You have too much faith in the world, Steve, always have. Too much faith in the galaxy, apparently."

Steve grins wryly. “You love me for it.” They should be teasing words, but there’s no lilt to his voice. Maybe unsure.

Bucky tries not to be disappointed in himself for his response, tumbling unbidden from his mouth: “Was that ever a question?” Stupid, insecure.

“Nah.” Steve presses his lips together. “I never stopped loving you, ya know? Even when I tried.”

“Tried?” Just like that, one fucking syllable, and the spark of anger is back to smoldering deep in his gut, burning like smoke in the back of his throat. “I never tried to stop loving you.” He rips away from Steve’s grip, steps back, and Steve shadows the motion with his hands.

“I didn’t mean —”

“Sure ya did, Stevie! You meant it. I never called you, and off you were kissin’ dames not a third your age and trying to stop loving me.” To this day, his stupid Brooklyn accent makes an appearance when he’s upset. And _damn it,_ he swore to himself he wouldn’t bring up Peggy’s niece and the garage.

“Bucky.” The self-righteous set to his jaw, his Sunday school voice. Like he’s disappointed in Bucky. You’d think either of them would get used to this. But Bucky might die fighting space aliens, but he’s made _progress_ with his head-shrinker and he’s not about to throw that away.

“Don’t you ‘Bucky’ me, punk.” He leans forward. “I was on a farm in _Wakanda_ tryin’ to undo years of brainwashing, trying to forget watching my own hands kill innocent people. You were on the run for protecting me, and I am sorry for that. Never woulda chose it for you. But no one asked you to get involved.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” So much for either of them not wanting a fight. Steve’s clenched his fists, is beating out a light rhythm on the backrest of his stupid swivel chair.

“Don’t _talk_ to me about not having choices.” He knows as he says it that it’s a bit unfair. Steve never had anything like HYDRA, but expectation and public opinion are their own kind of bondage. Steve’s always had free will in the general sense — far more than Bucky; far more than a good deal of people — but he’s had his fair share of choices ripped from him.

This one, for example. Bucky knows that Steve really doesn’t think he has a choice in fighting this battle. Knows that running away probably hasn’t even crossed his mind.

He’s so freaking principled. Bucky knows that he fought Stark for him, but if he were to ask Steve point blank, he’s sure he’d get a rehearsed song and dance about Truth, Justice, and The American Way.

On some level, maybe Steve knows how performative that is. Nothing like being the dead poster boy for American Patriotism for a couple decades to fuck with the head. Not HYDRA level head fuckage, but still. A decent amount of programming at the base level has gone into making Steve the way he is. People aren’t meant to be propaganda.

The analog clock on the far wall tick-tocks in the silence, and Bucky gives it a glance. This isn’t why he brought Steve up here. If they survive the day, they’ll have all the time in the world to fight. Bucky isn’t confident that they will. He’s only got so much time alone with Steve left, and he’s squandering it by sniping at him over a throwaway comment.

He swallows his temper — literally swallows it, pushes the ashy-hot feeling in his throat down and away — and looks Steve in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

Steve’s eyes dart away and back. Bright bright bright. “I’m not mad at you, Buck.”

Bucky finds it in himself to snort. “Like you have a right to be,” he says, grinning to cut the acid.

“You have a right, though?” Steve hates double standards.

Bucky knows this isn’t the same thing. “I didn’t have a right to feel things for a long time.” It’s a therapy line. “I don’t always know how to handle feelings that don’t come with consequences.”

“They still have consequences.” Steve’s mouth pulls up at the corner. 

A part of Bucky wants to argue, make Steve understand that hurt feelings and dysfunctional romance are nothing on water and ice and electricity and Pierce’s face in a halo of light saying how necessary this is, making him believe that it’s alright, that this is his life and his destiny. Wants to shake Steve until he gets that natural consequences are _nothing_ on HYDRA’s house of horrors.

But no, the time, he’s got to pull his stupid head out of the cycles of anger and bad memories. He leans way forward, knocks his forehead against Steve’s, rubs against his fuckin’ hard head. Knows he can take it. “Hey, enough with the sad talk, huh? I didn’t drag you up here so we could be miserable together.”

“Then why did ya?” Steve leans up into it, crashes the tip of his long nose into Bucky’s.

Bucky barely has to move a centimeter forward to kiss Steve gently. “That,” he says, knowing he’s being painfully cheesy. 

Then he pulls back, because leaning forward like that might not technically strain his muscles, but it’s not comfortable. “Move move,” he says, making a spinning motion with his finger. Steve rolls his eyes as he stands and turns and sits back down forward in the chair, and Bucky circles him like a cat and drops into his lap, straddling him, and presses into his stupid pastel face again.

This kiss isn’t hard; there’s no fight. Bucky lets Steve be all the push, relaxes as Steve’s beard scratches his chin and cheeks and Steve slobbers in his mouth and bites his lip, as enthusiastic and as messy in this as he’s ever been.

Time passes a little fuzzily from that moment; he knows they stop for breaths a lot, and he’s just whispered “I love you,” into Steve’s beard when Shuri finds them. He’s got his hands on Steve’s biceps and Steve’s twisting his hair into knots in his fists.

“You can’t hide forever, old man,” the princess sing-songs from the doorway, and he hears footsteps retreating as he pulls back and smiles sadly into Steve’s face.

“Let’s go save the world,” Steve says, half-grinning. His eyes are dark for the first time since Bucky’s seen him today. 

This saving-the-world business, it’s old hat for Steve. Bucky remembers telling him _“I read about you in a museum,”_ and Steve accusing him of lying, but he didn’t really. Had no clue if the guy in the Smithsonian and the guy in the Brooklyn walk-up and the guy standing in his shoddy kitchen were all the same guy. Still isn't sure he has a clue; but this guy talks like his old Stevie, throws a punch like him, kisses and cuddles like him. Maybe they'll only ever know each other now in pieces and memories. That's more than fine, more than Bucky has a right to want. And he _gets to have it._

And he wasn’t sure then, and he’s no more sure now, why this literal, actual superhero is investing his time, his last moments before an apocalyptic battle, his _love_ into a barely-stable-some-of-the-time ex-assassin. But he’s damn grateful, and what’s that they say about gift horses?

And so he’ll fight alongside Steve because it’s the right thing to do and because he loves this stupid punk and because maybe just shadowing the most righteous damn guy on the planet will earn him some good faith. But he’s not convinced he cares much about the world.

He cares about Steve Rogers. He’ll follow that guy into any battle, ever, no matter how insane or suicidal.

He slides off Steve’s lap and helps him up, doesn’t let his hand go as they leave the room. “Let’s go save the world,” he echoes. 

**Author's Note:**

> The first draft of this ended with "till the end of the line" because I am a total cliche, but I talked myself out of it. I'm terrible at endings though, so...not totally sure I'm happy with this one lol. I also have had this sitting in my drafts for a couple days, but I just now finished watching IW for the first time since opening night in theaters, and I'm Big Sad. Defo recommend watching it and then coming back and rereading this if you want to be emo.
> 
> Find me at fourgetregret.tumblr.com if you wanna yell at me, drop a prompt or just geek out :^)


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